The Boy IN My Phone

Gerbil-like Adoration

Lisa

That could have gone worse, Lisa told herself untruthfully, supposing the armchair had swallowed me whole. Actually, she realised, it would have been a blessing if it had.

Unable to face Sharl, she went for an orienting walk around the campus, taking her heels off and trying to make a list of the positives:

1. Calen would definitely remember who she was now.

2. She'd get to sleep in half the time, being able to concentrate all her pre-snooze fantasies on Goosy. 

3. Sharl wasn't an 'I told you so' kind of gal, plus...

4. She now knew better than ever to trust anyone ever again... though, was that really a positive?

There were a whole lot more negatives crowding into her head, crowing for attention. She had gone from a state of unimagined happiness and excitement to feeling like a whipped and hunted animal.

It wasn't Izzy and her coven conspiring against her that hurt. It wasn't even that Calen had led her into it with his pretend sexting - he would clearly have done anything that Isabel had asked of him, she knew. It was that people, who had no reason to prefer Isabel over her, had taken such delight in her misery and humiliation. Batty was her fellow rugby scrum prop and they usually got on well.

There were many others in that cafe who had been on the receiving end of Isabel's less than generous comments, yet they had all gleefully rounded on Lisa, like a pack of wild hunting dogs snapping at the heels of an injured wildebeest.

She rummaged in her bag for the two things that might cheer her up. Her phone was a hard-won gift to herself. She had saved all the pocket money her dad had thrown at her and her younger brother as guilt-money because he had left their mum for Edita from Poland.

Lisa reckoned they both had an extra bonus coming, because their mum hadn't dealt at all well with her new situation. Lisa had also worked hard after school in the corner shop with the boy who thought bananas had I.Q.s: 'probably only 20 or so; maybe less than nine,' and squirrelled away her earnings. And, when she had enough, she went out and bought the snazziest, the smartest, the biggest-screened phone that her money could buy.

She hauled the phone out of her bag and messaged the second thing that might help: her other bestie, Dobie, back in West London; Dobie who sat next to her in French and was every bit as infatuated with Goosy as she was. Every lesson he and Lisa talked through their joint passion for the biology teacher in their best French. Dobie had a holiday job in Primark she knew, but she still texted him, this was an emergency.

'Alors, Lisa, ca va?' Dobie messaged back.

'Pas bien, c'est horrible,' she wrote, 'Izzy est sur ma case. Je suis comme un wildebête.'

'Quelle?'

'Avec les chiens merchants.'

'Shopping dogs?!'

'Non, er...Chiens mauvais?'

'Poorly dogs?!'

'Naughty dogs, frère Dobes, sauvage. Izzy, elle ruine ma vie!'

'Mail me,' he wrote. That wasn't even French. Dobie couldn't help her here. Three hours in Cornwall and already she hated the place.

She answered Sharl's call at her friend's third attempt. 'You heard,' said Lisa.

'It's a digital age Lise; word travels.'

'It wasn't all bad; I nearly got a cappuccino off Isabel.'